Making an “Annie” Promotional Video

My good camera is out of commission… there was a class action lawsuit against Canon for the “lens error” flaw in the camera I bought, so perhaps I’ll be able to get it repaired for free. I volunteer doing PR for a local theatre company; while I was sitting in the waiting room during my 10yo’s auditions for a December production of “Annie,” the artistic director asked me to film the auditions. I hadn’t really used the camera on my iPad3 for much, but it was the best camera I had on me.

Yes, it’s kind of sad that, at the moment I was asked to make another video, in my bag or on my person I happened to have a phone with a crummy VGA camera, a MacBook pro with an iSight camera, an iPod Touch 4 with the two standard cameras in my iPod Touch 4, and an iPad 3 with the two standard cameras.

I didn’t record every kid’s audition, and for those whom I did record, I was not trying to document every mistake (my daughter messed up on the words to “Maybe” and had to start over again). I was really just trying to capture the feel of the audition process. (I’m planning to use more of the audition footage for another video sometime next week.) The next day I came back with an older video camera that let me zoom and pan and use a tripod more easily than on my iPad, but only took roughly serviceable video. Nothing near the quality of the videos I took with my “good” digital camera for Snow White, but given that I spent about three hours total on this, most of it while I was sitting in the waiting room during my daughter’s show choir rehearsal, I am satisfied with the results.

I use ScreenFlow for editing. The fluorescent lighting in the studio is pretty flat and bluish, so I used YouTube’s online “Enhancement” tool to warm up and brighten the colors.